Mama Ruby Read Free

neck is what controls every move the head makes. . . .”
    Beulah was flabbergasted. She was stunned to hear something so profound coming out of her baby sister’s mouth.
    “My word, Ruby Jean,” Beulah said, speaking in such a sharp tone of voice that it almost sounded like she was whistling under her breath. “You smarter than you look, girl. We ain’t got to worry much about you. It sounds like you already got everything under control.”
    Ruby was enjoying Beulah’s reaction to her neck comment. That was why she didn’t confess that she had overheard their mother saying almost the same thing to one of her female friends.
    True to her word, Ruby controlled every boy she got involved with. When she played stickball, or any other yard game on her block, she and her male playmates played by rules that she made up as she went along.
    “Ruby Jean, how come you don’t play with girls that much? You gettin’ too old to be shootin’ marbles and runnin’ up and down the street like a savage with them boys,” her mother mentioned one Saturday afternoon. Earlier that day, Ruby had shot marbles for several hours with a couple of boys from across the street.
    “I don’t like girls that much,” Ruby admitted. “They ain’t no fun. And they way too much trouble.”
    Beulah had married and moved out, so Ruby had a lot of free time on her hands now.
    “Well, you better rethink yourself, honey-child. There is plenty of little girls around here for you to socialize with. It don’t look good for my daughter to be spendin’ so much time with boys. People will start talkin’,” Reverend Upshaw told her.
    Girls bored and annoyed Ruby. All of the ones she knew only wanted to talk about school and church, making their own clothes, and baking pies. The only girl in the neighborhood who was even remotely interesting to Ruby was Othella Mae Cartier. But she was way off limits. Her mother, Simone, was a part-time prostitute with a seventh-grade education. Other than fucking and sucking, she had very few skills. Everybody who knew her knew that she had sold her body to hundreds of men in several New Orleans brothels. In addition to prostitution, she supported herself and her children by doing a variety of dull jobs for wealthy white women—housekeeping, ironing, and anything else that the women she worked for didn’t want to do.
    Ruby’s parents repeatedly ordered her to stay away from all of the fast girls. She received a sound whupping one day for walking down the street in front of half a dozen witnesses with a pregnant thirteen-year-old. This girl drank alcohol in public and bragged about the dozen or more boys that she’d already slept with. Since Ruby was not allowed to associate with girls like Simone’s daughter Othella—who was just as fast as that pregnant thirteen-year-old—she eventually tried to form relationships with other girls. Unfortunately, none of those relationships panned out. Those girls were dull and stupid. They didn’t even know half of what Ruby knew!
    So by the end of that year, behind her parents’ backs, Ruby started paying more attention to Othella.
    “I ain’t allowed to be seen with you in public, but if you want to, we can hang out together on the sly,” Ruby told Othella on the day that Othella invited her to her fourteenth birthday party.
    It didn’t seem fair to Ruby that Othella had more dolls and other toys than she had. And it didn’t seem fair to Ruby that Othella was so pretty. She decided that she could overlook Othella’s good looks, because she knew that it took more than good looks to get a boy’s attention these days. In spite of her feelings of jealously toward Othella, Ruby liked her and wanted to be her friend anyway.
    “That’s fine with me, Ruby Jean. I am used to hangin’ out with certain kids on the sly. But the real reason I wanted you to come to my party tomorrow night is because my brother Ike likes you,” Othella replied.
    That juicy piece of information